Inaugural Alumni Fellowship awarded

Collaborations between faculty,
graduate students and postdocs are a mainstay
and core value of research at the Salk. These
collaborations recently took a new direction—
outside the laboratory.

Recognizing the ongoing need for postdoc
support, Salk faculty issued a challenge to
alumni—those scientists who trained in the
Institute's labs—to match their philanthropic
contributions dollar for dollar to establish
the Alumni Fellowship Fund. Many alumni
responded with gifts, and the first Alumni
Fellowship has now been awarded, to
Seung Choi in Katherine Jones's lab.

"I am extremely grateful for the support the
Alumni Fellowship is providing for my work,"
Choi says. "This will allow me to expand my
research into a key molecular pathway involved
in the development of cancers."

Choi's research is focused on the Wnt signaling
pathway, which controls cell proliferation,
differentiation and embryonic stem cell growth.
Although the Wnt pathway is normally active
only during development, it can become inappropriately
reactivated in adult cells, giving rise
to colon cancer, melanomas, prostate cancer,
breast cancer and several other aggressive
malignancies, resulting in a poor prognosis.
Therefore, the deregulation of this pathway
is directly responsible for the vast majority of
human cancers.

Choi is specifically studying the Wnt pathway
in human colon and prostate cancers, and he
made the surprising discovery that the APC
tumor suppressor protein, which is mutated
in 85% of human colon cancers, collaborates
with a metastatic tumor suppressor, called
alpha-catenin, to switch off the expression of
genes that drive cell growth and proliferation.
Consequently, colon cancer cells with mutant
APC protein, or prostate cancers that lack the
alpha-catenin tumor suppressor, fail to turn off
these same sets of pro-growth genes.

Choi has created a new model for Wnt
signaling that makes clear predictions that
can be directly tested experimentally, and he
is developing a stable human prostate cell line
to explore the pathway further.

"The Salk faculty are very generous in their
support of science research, and we are excited
that Seung Choi was recently selected as the
inaugural fellow for this award," says Jones.
"The funding from the Salk Alumni Fellowship
Fund will provide essential support for this early,
promising research."

Please collaborate with Salk faculty in this
critically important endeavor and make your
contribution today. Your support of the Alumni
Fellowship Fund will help especially talented
postdocs get a jump on their careers. To learn
more, call (858) 453-4100, ext. 1405 or email
mshockro@salk.edu